Bring the Walls Down
by life among the dead
Summary: Callen slips too easily into his aliases. Everyone thinks it's just Callen being an amazing operative, but Sam thinks it's something else. G/Sam


Callen slips too easily into his aliases. Everyone else thinks it's just Callen being an amazing operative (which he is, Sam has never seen anything like him before), but Sam thinks it's something else. Sam watches Callen work. He has to. To see how he operates, to know his partner better. But it only serves to let him know fifty other sides to Callen. Which one was him?

The fake smile that Callen can so easily front, the glint in his eye he can make present or not. The way he walks like a predator sometimes, oozing self confidence into everything he does. Other times acts like a submissive lackey. Eyes shifting and nervous ticks.

It worries Sam. Had G lost such a sense of his own self identity that he can just be anyone but himself? No one ever knows what Callen is thinking. Hell, Sam didn't know half the time. He'd like to think that after years of being next to this man who has so many, so fucking many barriers and layers built around himself, that he would know him better than he thinks he does. Half the time Sam can't even tell if G's smiles are faked or if half the things he says about his past are all true. It bothers him. Gets under his skin.

He confronts him. Everyone else has gone home, Callen is shifting through paperwork on his desk.

"You did good today, G," he says. "Drinks on me?" Callen's gaze shifts up to him, unreadable, before he bites his lip and looks back at his desk.

"Maybe not tonight, Sam. After all, Hetty says I've been drinking too much." He laughs. Fake laugh #4. Defense mechanism. Humor.

"We all drink too much, G. Come on." Callen laughs again.

"Look, Sam. Thanks a lot, but I'm okay for tonight. Rain check?" Sam clenches his fists at his side to keep from reaching out to him.

"Let me in, man." The words come out before he even has time to stop himself. He closes the space between them to a mere few feet within moments. He doesn't miss the uncharacteristic slip of Callen's composure as he backs up into his desk. A bowl of staples falls onto the floor.

"I'm sick of it, G. You gotta tell me what's going on in that head of yours." He raises his hand when Callen opens his mouth to speak. "No, stop it. I won't let you slither your way out of this with your words. I need to say something." Callen's head tilts, eyebrows knitted together in...confusion? Wonder? Sam thinks it's something else uncharacteristic of Callen tonight, but then again, what does he know?

"You never tell me anything. You know I won't run off and tell a shrink, or tell Hetty. You know I'm not that cruel." Callen's lip quirks in an amused expression. It falls away in the blink of an eye. "You can tell me anything. But I don't know who you are anymore, G. You're so many people all the time, but I don't know you." And Sam sees the realization hit Callen right in the face. He almost steps back again, his eyes widen a fraction. And his mouth opens like he's going to say something.

This is it. Sam knows it to his core. G is so unguarded in this moment that Sam finds himself stepping closer just in case Callen decides to whisper it.

"I'm nobody." The words hit Sam like a punch in his gut. "I wish I had the answers you want, Sam. But I just can't allow myself to-" be defenseless around anybody. To show I have a weakness. The words didn't have to be spoken for Sam to hear them. Everything he had thought about Callen was wrong. He wasn't who he appeared to be. He was broken. He felt abandoned. He didn't know his own first name for Christ sake. He wasvulnerable. He wasn't as strong as everyone thinks he is. But he has to be for the team.

Callen looked so beautifully human this moment. Avoiding eye contact. Letting someone in for once is his life (Jesus, Callen). What? Did he think that Sam would think less of him for admitting that he wasn't a robot? That he was more human than any of them were? He had to be, Sam decided.

The space is gone, Sam pulls Callen to his chest. Leaves no room for him to get away. Callen's arms are pressed over his own body, crossed like a mummy. Self defense mechanism, even now.

Sam keeps one arm wrapped around Callen's shoulders, but the other he slips up the back of Callen's shirt. Presses his warm palm to the skin there at his lower back.

I'm **here**.

Callen lets him. A sigh of relief exhaled into his chest.

And Sam may have felt the wetness stain through his shirt. Knows Callen is crying.

Sam squeezes tighter. Rubs the skin under his fingertips.

Callen sobs harder.


End file.
